Odd Exchange

I saw an odd interaction on Wednesday. I can’t quite shake it from my mind. It probably means nothing, but.. well, you decide for yourself.

I am sitting with my baby in a circle of other mothers with their babies. We are in the children’s section of the local library. Babies are cooing, the ones that are mobile are.. well, mobiling. Nibbling dirty goodies from the floor and gurgling at each other, chubby fingers reaching out to explore each other’s eyeballs. At the head of the circle is a woman who works at the library, with a notepad in hand.

‘Right,’ she says, ‘Welcome back mothers, and babies. Before we start this week’s singalong I’d like to go round the group and get all your names and your babies’ names.’

So round the group we go.

I’m Cindy and this is little Aiyla. 

I’m Anna and this is Kyle.

I’m Sarah and this is Amy.

I’m Lilly and this is Darcy.

And so on.

Until we come to an older lady holding a chubby little cherub with a bow on her head. The cherub, not the lady.

‘Hi,’ the lady says, ‘I’m Steph and this is my granddaughter Sofia.’

‘Oh!’ the library worker exclaims, ‘Stephanie! You probably don’t recognise me out of context.’

Steph squints at her, smiles politely, cocks her head.

‘We used to live on the same street in Goodbridge. A good many years ago.’

‘Oh!’ Steph says, laughing awkwardly, ‘Yes!’. Her lips lied to her eyes.

Yet she still squints at the library woman and cocks her head, almost unintentionally.

‘Yeah we used to have a good natter back then. Hahah. Right, who’s next?’

Steph relaxes visibly, sinking into her seat. She doesn’t look like she recognised the library woman.

Then the strange thing happens. A couple of new ladies walk in as we’re doing the introductions. We widen the circle and they seat themselves somewhere before Steph.. so that the library woman has to go back to them and get them to introduce themselves.

Then it’s Steph’s turn again, seemingly, because the circle is quiet and the library woman is looking at Steph, pen poised, ‘And you are?’ she says, pointedly, as though Steph is being slow.

Huh?!

Steph looks surprised, she stutters, ‘uh, yes I’m Steph and this is my granddaughter Sofia..’ and her voice fades away.

I thought it was all so baffling. How did the library woman recognise Steph from long ago in the first instance and then forget she ever knew her, and then proceed to also forget that she had already introduced herself?

What do YOU think?

Tracey

At work there is a woman. Let us call her Tracey, because that is her name. No thinly-veiled references here. Just outright ones. I doubt Tracey will ever come across my blog.

Tracey is one of the oldies, but goldies. By oldie I mean she has been at the company for 25 years, as opposed to myself, who has only been there for one year and 3 months. Also, she is a grandmother, although that does not make her old. In fact, she is quite spritely and has an active mind. Also, the people she tends to hang out with are in their twenties, indicating that she likes to hang around with younger folk. By goldie, I mean that she sticks out as a person. Her personality wears a gold cloak, and one can forget about her, but one is not inclined to, because she inserts herself into an alcove in one’s mind, even though there is nothing distinct about her. How can that be?

Tracey is a woman of many words, but she is picky about who she shares them with. She sits diagonally opposite to me, but we have probably exchanged a maximum of 56 words. That is a rough estimate, to give you an example of how often we speak to each other. We became ‘pod mates’ on the 16th of October, you see, and I am a very quiet person at work, which is not like me at all, because at home and with my friends I am a chatterbox and sometimes a little deranged. Rather like a pigeon who has stumbled upon a state of being ruffled and confused.

Anyway. Tracey picks up the phone a lot at work, and has terribly long conversations with colleagues who either work in a different city at another branch, or on a different floor, or just even way across the office on the same floor. She even has long chats with colleagues at our branches in America. But those only start at 3pm, which is around 10am on the West Coast. We have a pretty big office. And because she has been here for 25 years, she is very well acquainted with a lot of people.

I like when Tracey picks up the phone. We generally do not pick up the phone. I only use my work desk phone to call companies abroad, or to ask IT to sort something out for me. Tracey uses it to catch up with people, while simultaneously carrying out work.

For this reason, I have learnt a lot about Tracey. She is now living alone with her husband, as her kids have all left. They drive a range rover. She lives across the field from work, so she walks in when it is not raining. Her son is getting a divorce. So they have to split their Christmas between her daughter who lives in Canada, and her son who lives with his only child two hours away.

When her husband calls, she picks up the phone, and says ‘Hey sweetie,’ without pronouncing the ‘t’, so it sounds like ‘sweedie’, which makes her sound like she is saying it with an American accent. The rest of her accent is distinctly northern.

Her husband calls between 5:00 and 5:30PM daily. He picks her up from work and they go out for meals, or dancing, or to the big city for some drinking. Sometimes they just go home and have a glass of wine together. Sometimes she ditches him to go to the gym with one of her buddies. I like when he calls, she seems very comfortable chatting with him in public and does not run off to a corner to chat with him, like I do when my husband calls. She doesn’t mind if we hear their conversation. She talks to him like she talks to her friends.

I silently tap away at my computer, while her conversations and her life sail around my head. I drop a lot of eaves, I have to say, but how can one help it?

Anyway. That is Tracey.

A very average woman, no? And yet, she has her very own post.

Grazyna Adamska-Jarecka

A Man

A strange man was staring intently at something on the pavement.

I stopped to see what he was looking at.

He glanced at me, and in his eyes, I saw something that I didn’t care to examine.

Then he lifted his hat, put it back on his head, and walked off, lighting a cigarette.

His footsteps sounded gravelly on the pavement, which was slick with the drizzle that had rained down for the past hour.

The heavens were grey.

The houses huddled together.

A faint haze clouded the world, just so you couldn’t make out what was in the distance, but you couldn’t be entirely sure it was a fog.

‘What were you looking at?.’

The man vanished into the not-fog.

And there was nothing on the pavement.

I hurried along, feeling self conscious, somehow. Why did I stop. I don’t know.

I was expecting to see a dead rabbit, it’s body ripped apart so the insides spilled out and plastered onto the elements.

I was expecting to see a hole leading right down to the other side of the world, assuming the world was round, that is.

I was expecting to see the secrets of life in an open book. Why else would a man be so fascinated?

I don’t know.

Why was the strange man staring at the pavement?

When I got home, my roommate told me that sometimes people have private thoughts which the world has no business trying to get a hold of.

‘You can’t just pick up the phone, Penny, and ask what’s up.’

But you can, that is what phones are for.

I really wanted to know.

 

The Next Door Neighbours

They are very odd. We never see them, even when all the lights in their house are on. Their car sits outside all the time, on weekdays and weekends, but they don’t appear to be in.

We often speculated about them, when we first moved in.

‘I think they are Polish,’ my husband said, as we heaved boxes upstairs.

‘Why do you think that?’

He shrugged, ‘everybody is Polish on this street.’

I thought that was a generalisation, and thought about going over there with some fruit tarts to be neighbourly. The oven refused to work, however, setting off a fuse every time I turned it on. So I gave up on that idea for the time being, making a mental note to do so when the oven was sorted out.

Three nights after we moved in we heard them arguing at 1am. So we crept to our windows and peered out. A tall shadow stood by the door of their sedan, while the woman inside, illuminated vaguely by the light in her car, spoke passionately, her hands moving up and down and sideways in emphasis. The shadow stooped and a hand reached into the car, but she slapped it away.

We crept back to our bed, and lay awake for another hour as the muffled arguing outside continued.

Three weeks after we moved in, a few minutes after my husband left for work, I was standing at the sink washing the breakfast dishes when I saw them. Or, rather, I saw him. He was systematically wiping condensation off his car from all sides with an ice scraper, stepping sideways each time he was done with the window. He was glancing around him in an inconspicuous manner, dark eyes darting from side to side. The way he did it was so interesting that I had to stop, turn off the tap, and watch. His hair was greying on the edges and thinning at the temples, a little messy.

Then he glanced straight into my window, through my blinds, and made eye contact with me. I was so startled I dropped the knife I was holding and it clattered loudly on the floor. My kitchen window was open so there was no doubt he heard that.

When he got into his car he turned on his windscreen wipers and his wife came out with a mug in one hand and a messenger bag dangling off the other shoulder. She had a secret smile on her face as she handed the mug to her husband(?) and got into the car. Her hair was thick and brown with grey flicks at the front. Her face was slim and olive coloured, her nose slightly pinched and her chin small and pointy.

The car reversed slowly and I fancied they were both staring at me as the car turned, and drove off.

I went upstairs to change and get ready for work, and when I pulled the bedroom curtains open, their car was there again.

Nobody was inside it, and nobody was around on the drive.

I thought that mighty curious indeed. I am having second thoughts about going over there when the oven is fixed. I don’t know what I might find.

I thought she was American

I thought she was American,

I really don’t know why.

Her frame was large,

shapely.

Her purple vintage coat,

fell over her knees

in neatly pleated frills,

Vibrant, dazzling.

Her heel was ladylike

Her hair elegantly, gently,

pulled

to the back of her head.

Her smile was wide, flamboyant.

When she opened her mouth,

her Liverpudlian syllables filled every corner of the room,

and a small stone of disappointment

dropped in my chest,

with a muffled plop.

I thought she was American.

How stereotypical am I?

Oh, hello, stranger.

There is a woman next to me eating a tuna sandwich. Well, I think it is tuna. I can’t be too sure. You never can, with the wide variety of sandwich fillings these days. What happened to good old cheese and tomato? That washes down well with coffee.

This lady is sad, folks. Her face is flushed, and she pulls a tissue out of her coat pocket to wipe her eyes and nose. She also stares vacantly out the window for a while, and her shoulders slump as though the weight of the world is settled on them. She holds herself close to her heart, her knees inwards, her chest bent in on herself, as though she is curling up like a desert leaf to hold herself in and protect herself. Her posture suggests she might be nervous or uncomfortable.

She has a slim notebook in front of her. The cover is black, with green drawings all over it. She is left handed, and writes with her hand bent over her sentences. It is not a way I could envision writing. Her bag is purple, like space, dotted with stars. Her hair is shoulder length and curly, and she wears glasses.

Her eyes are sad, and I want to go and sit next to her and sprinkle some joy upon her day. But I don’t know how to. What would I say?

Hello, I noticed you look sad. Wanna talk about it?

Hi! I’m Lenora. I love your diary.

Oh, hello. Look at these pictures of cute squirrels I found on the internet.

Good afternoon. Do you think you could take a few moments to talk about our Literary Lord and Linguistic saviour John Ronald Reuel Tolkien?

Hi, I really like your hair.

Hello, ….

The possibilities are endless. But none sound remotely right.

Oh. She has put her coat on, and off she goes. Mayhaps she wrote all her sad thoughts in her diary, and now feels relieved to carry on with her day.

Perhaps she wasn’t sad at all, but had hay fever.

I wish I talked to her. I want to know what she has to say.

I don’t know how to talk to strangers though, without seeming like a creep, or uncommonly odd.

Well. Maybe next time.